


The Arrow and the Song

by CrowsAtAPicnic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Fluff, Hammertime - Freeform, M/M, Pepsicola, johndave - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 15:50:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrowsAtAPicnic/pseuds/CrowsAtAPicnic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I shot an arrow into the air,<br/>It fell to earth, I knew not where;<br/>For, so swiftly it flew, the sight<br/>Could not follow it in its flight.</p><p>I breathed a song into the air,<br/>It fell to earth, I knew not where;<br/>For who has sight so keen and strong,<br/>That it can follow the flight of song?</p><p>Long, long afterward, in an oak<br/>I found the arrow, still unbroke;<br/>And the song, from beginning to end,<br/>I found again in the heart of a friend.</p><p>~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<br/>______________<br/>John and Dave and their entire life as lame dorks who fall in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sun-warmed metal greeted your sweaty palm as you ascended the tallest jungle gym, relishing in the crisp September breeze that shifted your hair around. From the top of the bars, you could observe your kingdom with an imperious eye, letting a grin stretch across your face and reveal your oversized front teeth. Your name was John Egbert, you were six years old, and it was your first day of kindergarten. 

It was all so exciting! As you glanced down from your seat in the sky, you could see what had to be a million other kids running around, and you wanted to be friends with all of them! Before today, the most kids you ever saw in one place were your cousins at your family reunion, and that was only--you frowned and counted on your fingers—four kids! Counting you. You didn’t have enough fingers to count the kids on the play ground. 

Your dad had dropped you off this morning with a shaving-cream scented kiss pressed to your forehead and a fatherly warning to “be have”. You didn’t know why he always told you that—you were ALWAYS ‘have’! Right now you were playing your favorite game: you were the prince of a golden kingdom, and you and your hammer beat all the bad guys until you could become king! Not having anyone to play with yet, you decided to use your wind powers to fly up to the top of a mountain and find some. A good hero always had friends. Everybody already seemed to be playing with someone, though. A bunch of boys kicked around a red rubber ball by the fence, a group of three was having a contest to see who could stay on the monkey bars longest without falling, and some girls sat in a circle by the swings and played some dumb girly clapping game. Just as you were beginning to get the same twisting feeling in your stomach that you got when you lost your dad in the grocery store, you spied a small, pale figure sitting on the edge of the sand box, staring intently at something cupped in his hands.

Quick as a flash, you scrambled down the jungle gym—the mountain—and bounded over to the boy, beaming with excitement. You plopped down next to him and leaned over his hands, staring at what he held.

“Eeew, _gross!_ Why are you holding a dead mouse?” You jerked back, not wanting to touch it. It was only then that you looked at the boy’s face, and you were surprised to see big, pointy sunglasses hiding his eyes. Why was he wearing those? You stared, mouth hanging slightly open, until he spoke.

“Dead things are cool.” You kept staring, and the boy fidgeted. “Bro told me I’m going to die some day.”

This shook you out of your trance. You puffed out your chest, giving him your most heroic smile. “Not me! I’m going to be king!”

The kid gave you a funny look—at least, you think he did. His nose sort of crinkled. “You can't be a king, stupid.”

Your eyes widened. “You can’t say that word! And I am _too_ going too be king. You should play with me, and you can be king too!” You stood up and brushed off the seat of your pants, which had sand all over it. “Only don’t bring the mouse. It’s gross.”

The boy hesitated for a moment, then gave you a small smile. That made you really happy! You hadn’t seen him smile yet, even though the other kids on the playground were all laughing happily with each other. It made you feel proud that you were the one to make him smile. 

“Okay, but I don’t want to be a king. Kings are stupid; all they do is sit on dumb chairs all day and talk. I want to be a knight.” You noticed he spoke a little funny: slower than you, and making the way he said “I” sound a little like “ah”, and a few other things that you couldn’t quite place. Deeming this unimportant for the moment, you grinned at him and tugged his arm to help him stand up. He dropped the mouse into a hole under that sand box and let you tug him forward.

“I’m John!” you offered brightly, then held out your hand because your dad said that’s what gentlemen do. The boy looked at your hand for a moment, seemingly confused, and then tried to high five it. Did his dad not teach him to be a gentleman? 

“Dave.”

“You’re weird!” you laughed. Finding a stick on the ground, you brandished it in his direction. “This is my hammer! We have to go fight bad guys now!”

Dave glanced around and found a stick of his own. “Hammers are lame. Swords are a lot cooler.” Despite your “lame” hammer, he ran after you, and together you rounded up the bad guys and sent them to jail, which was the jungle gym you had climbed earlier. Dave wanted to kill his bad guys, but you stopped him because everyone knows good guys don’t kill bad guys, they just put them in jail or wait for them to fall off a cliff or something. By the time the teachers came out and shepherded you and Dave and all the other kids inside, you were panting and laughing and Dave even gave you another smile, which made you super happy. You ate Goldfish crackers together for snack, and you offered him some of the Gushers your dad left in your backpack but Dave said “they look like caterpillar poop” and wouldn’t eat any. 

At nap time, you unrolled your mat next to Dave’s and shared your blanket with him, since his Bro forgot to pack his. Neither of you slept—naps were for babies! Also you were way to excited to sleep. Dave whispered to you that his Bro told him to never let his guard down, and he was pretty sure falling asleep in a strange classroom was letting his guard down so he wasn’t going to do it. Instead, you told Dave the jokes that your dad was always cracking, trying to make him smile at you again, and he did, but only because “that was the dumbest thing I ever heard, John”. You laid together on the hard classroom floor until your teacher waved a stupid girly plastic want over your heads and said “Wake up sleepy heads!” to tell you that nap time was over. 

By the end of the day, you and Dave were inseparable, and you hugged him goodbye when your dad came to pick you up. Tomorrow was going to be so much fun!

On the drive back home, you bounced up and down in your car seat, telling your dad all about your new best friend and how you were going to fight a dragon tomorrow at recess. You thought about asking him if you could bring an extra blanket for Dave to use tomorrow at nap time, but secretly you liked snuggling close to Dave so you didn’t mention it.

The next day, it looked like Dave had the same thoughts you did, because he said he didn’t have any blankets at his house so he had to keep using yours. Bro said so, so he had to. You knew he was lying, but you didn’t mind one bit.

♦

It wasn’t very long into school before Dave revealed himself to be the best artist in the class, so today you just sat at the coloring station and watched him draw a crocodile, in awe of his skill. He used red for everything, though, and when you said “Aren’t crocodiles green?” he just shrugged and said “Red is my favorite color.”

You laid your head down in the crook of your elbow and watched the tip of Dave’s crayon scratch across the page, and suddenly you remembered the question you had the first time you saw him. 

“Why do you wear those sunglasses?” Since meeting him, you guess they were so much a part of him that you just stopped questioning them. But now that you said it out loud, the question burned in the air and you waited in anticipation for his answer.

“First, they’re shades. Shades are way cooler than sunglasses,” he informed you without looking up from his paper. You were pretty sure “shades” were the same thing as sunglasses, but Dave was smarter than you at a lot of things, so you let it go. “Second, I could ask you why you were those glasses.”

You were slightly surprised that he turned the question back at you. “I can’t see very well without them. Dad says bad eyesight runs in our family.” Did Dave need his shades to see?

“Yeah, well being cool runs in mine. So we gotta wear shades.”

“Oh.” It made sense. Cool people always wore sunglasses, and Dave was the coolest person you knew. You continued watching him draw, content with his answer.

 

Kindergarten passed in a blur of playgrounds and sleepless nap times and learning, and before you knew it, it was the last week of school and your class was taking a field trip to the zoo. You had to pick a buddy, and naturally you and Dave paired up immediately. 

The zoo was hot and kind of stinky, but you and Dave were way too engrossed in the animals to care. You held his hand as you bounced from exhibit to exhibit, and vaguely you thought you wanted to study animals when you grew up. Animals were the coolest. Your favorite part was the reptile house, but Dave kept asking you when your class would go see the penguins, which of course you couldn’t answer. When your teacher finally led you to the penguin tank, though, Dave pulled you to the front of the crowd and pressed his hand against the glass, leaning as close as his shades would let him. 

You had been largely ignoring the tour guide this whole time, but one thing she said caught your attention. “Penguins are special in the animal kingdom because they mate for life, like humans. We have two married pairs, as you can see…” Married? Penguins couldn’t get married! That was ridiculous. You giggled a little.

“Heh, Dave. Those penguins are married!”

“Mhmm,” he said vaguely, too caught up in the little birds as they hopped from rock to rock.

“But they’re all wearing tuxedos! Isn’t the girl getting married supposed to wear a wedding dress?”  
“You’re being dumb, John,” he murmured, still staring into the exhibit.

You sat on the ledge and leaned against the glass, pouting because Dave wasn’t paying attention to you, but then the greatest idea you ever had popped into your head! 

“Dave! We should get married!” You stood back up and grabbed Dave’s hand again, bouncing excitedly. Dave finally unglued his attention from the penguins and gave you that skeptical nose-crinkle look he had.

“What? Two boys can’t get married, John.” 

“Sure they can! All those penguins are wearing tuxedos, so they must be boys, and they got married! Also, we’re best friends. Dad says when you marry someone they’re your best friend!”

“No, they can’t. Bro says two boys getting married is illegal. He says it’s stupid, but it’s true. ”

You wrinkled your nose at that news. “That’s so dumb. Well, we should get married anyway! It can be in secret. Nobody has to know!”

Dave thought about it for a minute, then gave you a small smile that makes you grin back even bigger than before. “Okay,” he said.

“But we can’t do it until we’re grown-ups, because only grown-ups are allowed to get married,” you said. Dave nods.

You walk through the rest of the zoo still holding Dave’s hand, somehow even happier than you were before. When your dad comes to pick you up after school, you glance around and then lean into the front seat to whisper in his ear. 

“Dave and I are getting married!” you exclaim in a hushed voice, beaming despite the thrill of fear at doing something illegal that rushes down your spine. But you and Dave were good guys, so even if you were caught you wouldn’t go to jail, because that was where the bad guys went.

Your dad looks at you in amusement, and you’re glad that he’s not mad at you for doing something illegal. “Is that so? Well, make sure to invite me to the wedding.” You smile and nod enthusiastically, then buckle yourself into your car seat. Dave is standing in the car rider line a few yards away from your car, and you wave at him as you drive away. You can’t wait to get married to him!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fifth grade and Dave's birthday

In fifth grade, you finally saved up enough allowance to buy Dave a birthday present with your own money. Christmas break started a few days before his birthday this year, and you planned to hang out with your best friend every day your dad would let you (usually Christmas Eve and Christmas day were family days, so they were a no-go). When you asked your dad to take you to the mall for Dave’s Christmas present, he smiled and checked his coat pockets for his car keys while you carefully counted thirty dollars out of your piggy bank. Half of it was in loose coins, but maybe your dad would use his credit card and you could just pay him back.

It was December first, and Dave’s birthday was in two days. He was going to be 11! You were kind of jealous that he was older than you, but you’d catch back up to him in April. 

Yesterday Dave and his Bro stopped by your house to give you an invitation to Dave’s birthday party (Dave had drawn all over it—you knew he was a good artist, but he always drew horribly on purpose! He said it was ironic. You said he was stupid), and while Dad and Bro talked about the details and boring grown-up stuff, you and Dave scampered up to your room. While you worked on finishing your Lego Death Star model and Dave sculpted a penis out of the leftover pieces (you both had to stifle your laughs, because if your dad heard he would come and scold you for your ungentlemanly behavior), Dave told you about how Bro was taking the two of you out for his birthday. As much as you begged him to tell you where you would be going, he just smirked and threw the Lego penis at you. You then proceeded to tackle him and wrestle around on your floor, knocking all the progress off your Death Star, until your dad called you down so that Bro could take Dave to get his hair cut. You'd learned over the years that Striders were finicky about their hair.

Christmas music jingled incessantly in your ears as you tugged your dad through the mall, but you ignored it because it was rude of them to start Christmas before Dave’s birthday! You hadn’t even started planning your Christmas presents yet (actually, that wasn’t true—you had been practicing a piano piece for Dad)—but Dave came first.

You finally came to a stop just outside of the food court, where a sunglasses kiosk was still somehow in business despite the season. You decided months ago that your present to Dave would be to get him some better shades, because the ones he always wore were as dumb as his horrible drawings, and you think he would look better in some shades like Ben Stiller's. Somehow Bro pulled off the anime shades, but you just had a feeling Dave needed to look like a 1970s cop. Even Dave would have to admit that 1970s cops were the epitome of cool.

With your dad’s help, you picked out the _perfect_ pair and got the guy selling them to wrap them for you (you had to ask for a specifically non-holiday paper, though), and you bounced in your seat in the food court while your dad bought you both Cinnabon. Dave was going to have the best birthday ever!

When your dad dropped you off at Dave’s apartment on the third, you could barely contain your excitement. Dave opened the door and you immediately launched yourself at him, pulling him into and excited hug and then shoving your present at him the moment you pulled away.

“Open it, open it!” you chanted, hopping in circles around him.

“Dude, chill,” he responded, but you could pick out a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, which only made you smile wider. You loved making Dave smile.

With a wave to Bro and a quick kiss to the top of your head, your dad left you in Bro’s hands until the next morning, when he would pick you up after you slept over at Dave’s. You had been so caught up in Dave’s present and wondering where Bro was taking the two of you that you completely forgot to get excited about the sleepover part, but now that you remembered you could barely contain yourself. Dave grabbed your hand and led you to the TV area, where three more presents were stacked haphazardly on the plywood and cinder block coffee table. 

You flopped onto the couch, lying on your stomach, and Dave sat down in front of you facing the coffee table. Bro sauntered in with a nod in your direction, and finally you couldn’t wait any longer.

“Dave, if you do not open that present right this second I am going to explode,” you warned, poking him in the side. He snorted and slapped your hand away, but then he was tearing into the wrapping and pulling out the shades and turning towards you and his mouth was kind of hanging open and you couldn’t stop the smile from splitting your face if someone _paid_ you, because he was sliding his old shades off and folding them carefully and putting them on the coffee table, then gently putting on the ones you gave him and he looked so right. So _Dave_. He picked up his old shades again and used them as a mirror, and he broke into the biggest grin you’d ever seen and pulled you into a huge hug. Over his shoulder, you could see the smallest of smiles playing on Bro’s lips, and you didn’t think you could get any happier.

You were wrong.

Dave knew you didn’t like cake, so instead he got Bro to make some bacon to cover the Jalapeno pizza he ordered for dinner. After Dave blew out the ten candles Bro stuck into the crust, the three of you enjoyed a ridiculously cholesterol-packed dinner of bacon pizza and Doritos.

You found yourself flopped back on the couch with Dave, stomach heavy and your head resting in his lap as he opened the other presents from Bro—new headphones (which were supposedly really high-tech and Dave flipped, but you couldn’t see what was so special), one of Bro’s weird butt puppets (at which Dave shrieked and flung across the room, making Bro laugh the hardest you’d ever seen), and a dead bat preserved in a jar, which you thought was totally gross until Dave showed you that it had two heads. That was pretty cool.

You had almost forgotten that there was anything more to do when Bro stood up, twirling his car keys around a semi-gloved finger.

“You ready to go, kiddies?” You glanced up from where your head was pillowed on Dave’s thighs as he examined the bat jar, and then you remembered Dave’s mysterious hinting.

“Where are we going?” you asked, sitting up quickly. Your excitement was back full-force, stuffed stomach forgotten. It was almost creepy how Dave and Bro both gave you an identical smirk at the same time, and Dave just poked your arm and replied mysteriously, “Wait and see”.

***

It was laser tag.

You all but vibrated with excitement when you figured out where you were, Bro barely having time to pull into the bowling alley parking lot and park the car before you and Dave were slamming the rusted Jeep's doors behind you and running inside. 

The games themselves were fast and intense, and usually whoever had Bro on his team won, but it was still fun all the same. Bright lights flashed through the darkness and adrenaline coursed through you, straining your eyes for the glint of neon off darkened lenses. You’d never played laser tag before, but you quickly decided that it was your new favorite thing and that you definitely wanted to be a professional laser tag player when you grew up. Dave agreed and suggested you form a team.

When you were both panting and exhausted, Dave suggested you take a break, and Bro smiled and produced a sock full of quarters from his pocket, unleashing the two of you into the alley’s arcade section while he went to play another round of laser tag with the employee who’d helped fit you with your gear—Bro seemed to have taken a liking to him, and asked him to play when he got off work. You'd never seen Bro act the way he did when he was talking to the guy—almost as if he was...embarrassed? Was that even a thing for Bro? You knew Dave got embarrassed because as much as he tried to be cool, he was actually a huge dork, but Bro...

Dave elbowed you. “Let’s get out of here before they start making out, jesus”—and it didn't take long for you to forget about Bro and the buck-toothed employee as you and Dave lost yourselves among the beeps and blips of the arcade games. You beat his butt at Pac Man and Asteroid, but he was way better than you at Dance Dance Revolution and the claw machine (he gave you the stuffed bunny he won, because “it reminds me of you, Egbert—look, same teeth and everything!”. You punched him in the shoulder but accepted the bunny).

The two of you ended up crashing in the food area with a paper basket of nachos to share while you waited for Bro to emerge from the laser tag room to take you home. He finally did emerge, and something about him seemed different as he waved goodbye to the employee and snagged a nacho from the bottom of the basket. You could just make out Dave eye roll through his shades (which you were pleased to see had not came off his face since he unwrapped them, even in the darkness of the laser tag space), and then the three of you were back in Bro’s car as he drove you home. You didn’t remember falling asleep, but then the car stopped and you were blinking awake again, the stuffed bunny held in your lap and your head resting on Dave’s shoulder. He wasn’t looking at you, but by the orange city light shining softly through the car window you could see a slight upturn of his lips. He finally glanced down and, seeing that you were awake, quickly fixed his poker face and shoved you off of him good-naturedly.

“Bro doesn’t care when we go to bed, and I’m not tired yet. Think you can stay awake a little longer?” he asked over his shoulder, pushing open the car door and letting in a gust of cool night air.

“I can try,” you replied with a grin, but you found that a difficult task when you were snuggled on the couch one stairs-climbing escapade later, a blanket tucked around your shoulders and a warm bowl of popcorn in your lap. Dave was reading out the names of movies to you from the shelves next to the TV, and you were trying to listen but laser tag takes a lot out of a kid, okay?

“…and, ugh, I hesitate to even offer this one as a choice… Con Air,” Dave finished, grimacing as he turned around to face you again. You sat up a little straighter as he told you the last choice, which Dave didn't miss. He sighed and turned back to the TV, muttering something that sounded like “why did I even bother reading out all of those dumb movies, freaking hell” as he popped Con Air into the DVD player and sauntered back to the couch to join you under the blanket. A sleepy smile made its way onto your lips and you leaned against him, suddenly feeling an overwhelming need to close your eyes. You hear yourself mumbling “Thanks, Dave. Happy birthday,” as the opening credits play, and then you let yourself drift into peaceful darkness, Dave’s warmth under the blanket a welcome comfort in the December chill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gave me a little trouble because my own memory of fifth grade is a giant blur, so sorry if this chapter seems a little awkwardly written! The next chapter is when I start letting them swear like big boys, so that will make writing them much easier. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I pull a hakuna matata to get through middle school awkwardness, and Dave and John enter high school.

Your name is John Egbert, and middle school was hell and you’re not going to talk about it. Except maybe to mention that you had braces, acne, and no concept of fashion despite your growing self-awareness, and these facts combined into an ungodly mess of preteen angst and rather severe self esteem issues. Dave, on the other hand, was one of the lucky bastards whom puberty welcomed with a tender embrace instead of a kick in the balls. He grew taller at a fairly regular rate, instead of the way you graduated seventh grade as a munchkin, virtually destroyed everything you owned with your summer clumsiness, and returned in eight grade a stretched, gangly mess (though Dave was still three inches taller than you, damn him). Muscle mass also seemed to build on him in a way that it never would on you, though this might have been due to the fact that his strifes with his brother were an intense and daily ordeal, whereas the only intense thing in your life was the boss battles in your latest video game. Dave got a girlfriend in the middle of eighth grade, Terezi Pyrope, and that strained your relationship a bit because he wasn’t quite sure how to balance out his bro-time with his ho-time. He broke it off with her for reasons nobody but Terezi knew, and somehow the way she smiled at you was even creepier after they broke up. 

Yeah, those three years were weird as hell.

But you’re a freshman now, and you just got an answering text back from Dave with a picture of his school schedule: you share three out of your six classes, and your lunch period. A grin stretches its way across your face, which is thankfully clear of acne for the moment. You figured out proper hygiene towards the end of eighth grade, and your countenance has benefitted greatly. You’ve been thinking you might even get a girlfriend this year.

Nearly every day this summer was spent in the presence of your best friend: You and Dave chilling in his and Bro’s apartment playing video games, you and Dave at the pool beating each other with pool noodles, you and Dave taking your bikes to the ice cream place where Jane worked just to mess with her. Your cousin was a good sport about that, and usually you could wheedle a free scoop out of her. 

But now it was time to get bogged down in school again, and you weren’t as nervous about starting high school as you thought you’d be. You had Dave, and hopefully while he was taking Photography I and you were in Biology (a prerequisite for AP Bio, which you’d been itching to take since sixth grade), and the other two classes you didn’t share, you would make some new friends. You’d had friends besides Dave through the years, but none of them really stuck, fading out of you mind as soon as you had different classes. You think you probably would have made even more friends if people hadn’t been intimidated to get between you and Dave—In class, you were always whispering together, or you would doodle on his arm, or if you sat in the back together you would share Dave’s ear buds and try to keep it quiet enough that the teacher wouldn’t hear. You assumed that things wouldn’t be much different this year.

The first day of school came in a groggy blur of showering and bus riding, and you found yourself standing nervously by a brick pillar at the front of the school waiting for Dave’s bus to arrive as hoards of kids much bigger than you slumped past, already old hands at high school. It was going to take some getting used to, going from being the oldest grade at your middle to being relatively shrimpy again. You took a deep breath and avoided eye contact with the group of seniors flooding in from the student parking lots. At least your voice had finished cracking, for the most part. Jesus, your heart went out to kids like Sollux Captor, whose voice seemed to crack once in the middle of eighth grade and stay falsetto ever since. The poor kid sounded like Mickey Mouse with a lisp.

You pull your beanie tighter over your ears and let out a sigh of relief as you spied a familiar pair or aviators bobbing towards you through the crowd.

Sometime during sixth grade you’d stopped hugging Dave publicly, but that didn’t make your bro-cuddles any less awesome on movie nights. You did miss it sometimes, though, and you had to hold yourself back from pulling him into a tender bro embrace when he reached your spot by the pillar. Didn’t need to brand yourself as a homo the first day of high school. That would be ridiculous, seeing as you are 100% not a homosexual.

You hear the tinny sound of an electronic beat pulsing out of the headphones around Dave’s neck, but they had become a regular fixture in his appearance in recent years, so you were used to it. 

“Yo.”

You snorted and shoved his shoulder so he’d start walking again, adjusting your bag and taking your spot next to him. “You’re such a poser. Dork.”

He glanced sideways at you from behind his shades, and you saw the corner of his mouth twitch up. People who hadn’t known him as long as you had would never notice things like that, but after so long with him, reading Dave had become second nature to you.

“I am the coolest kid you will ever meet, Egbert, so fuck off.” Dave fixes his gaze ahead again and adjusts his hands in his pocket. Your nose is met with the stale, vaguely mildew-y smell all schools seemed doomed to have as the two of you enter the building. “Do you know where our homeroom is?” 

***

From there, the weeks go by fairly quickly, and the first quarter is over before you know it. You’ve made a few friends, but you have to say you’re most interested in Vriska Serket, a girl who’s in your history class. She can be a little scary sometimes, but it turns out her movie tastes are similar to yours. She laughs at your dumb jokes, too, but she also laughed at certain points in the lesson about the Black Plague you had the other day, so you don’t know what that says about your comedy. 

She’s super hot, so her questionable sense of humor can be overlooked for now.

You chickened out on asking her to Homecoming, so you and Dave just sat in your room and played Super Smash Bros (Melee, everyone knows that the Gamecube was the best system) instead that night. You are determined to ask her out soon, though—she’s been sending you all the right signals, and the two of you talk a lot over Pesterchum now. The only problem is that you still haven’t figured out how or when you’re going to do it yet, and Dave is being infuriatingly unhelpful even though he’s the only one of your friends who’s actually had a girlfriend. 

“Do I get her flowers?” you muse out loud one day in the back of the Jeep as Bro drives you and Dave home from school (he was unwilling to get up “at the asscrack of dawn” to drive the two of you to school, but he was cool enough to pick you up and spare you the sweaty bus ride home).

“Dude, I don’t fucking care.” Dave stares stonily out the window. He’s been really grumpy lately, and frankly you’re getting tired of it.

“Okay, okay, jeez. I’m just kind of floundering here, so I need to talk it out sometimes.” You pause for a second, thinking. “Flowers are lame, anyway,” you finally decide.

Except for the low kick of the music emanating from Dave’s headphones, silence fills the car until Bro pulls into the parking lot of the Strider apartment building. You could ask him to drop you at home, but your dad is at work until 7 every night and you don’t like being alone for that long. It gets too quiet. Besides, you’ve been coming over to their apartment every day after school since third grade, and it’s kind of a given at this point. It’d be weird not to.

Bro shoots Dave a meaningful look that you don’t miss but can’t quite discern the meaning of as you walk across the parking lot, and you’re still mulling over what it could have meant a few hours later when you’re absently playing with Dave’s fingers as you slouch on his bed and eat through Netflix on his laptop. He’s been weirdly quiet today.

“Dude, is something wrong?” you finally ask, pausing the show you can’t remember the name of and rolling over to face him. Dave remains staring up at the ceiling, impassive. 

“I’m fine,” he mutters. You huff.

“Really? Because you’ve been kind of pissy all week and I can’t figure out what your deal is.”

Dave’s eyebrows twitch down in annoyance, and he pulls his hand away from yours to un-pause the show. 

He’s kind of pissing you off. When he’s mad with somebody, usually you’re the one he’s spewing tortuous metaphors at to get it off his chest, but when he’s being this pissy around you it’s usually because you did something wrong. Last time this happened was when you accidentally smashed a jar of preserved eels on his shelf and promptly puked on his carpet because of the sight and smell of the mess. That had only lasted a few hours, though, and after that he’d just laughed at you for your “delicate lady stomach”. That had been easy to figure out, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what you did this time.

You re-pause the show.

“David Strider, you are going to tell me what’s wrong this instant or so help me I’ll—I’ll steal all your Doritos!” You look at him, hoping to see the ghost of a smile that usually follows one of your dumb threats, but it didn’t appear.

“That’s not my name,” he says instead, then rolls over to face the wall.

Goddammit.

A pregnant silence follows in which you shift nervously, and you begin to catch on to the extent of his mood. Finally, he mutters something indiscernible.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“I said I don’t think you should ask Vriska out,” he says, only loud enough for you to barely hear it. He back muscles are tight as he says it.

“What? Dude, that’s what this is about?” You push yourself up to a sitting position and close his laptop, setting it at the foot of the bed. Looking down at him, he’s frowning minutely and chewing at his bottom lip. He finally rolls over to look at you again.

“Dude, she’s a bitch. I heard she dated Tavros Nitram in eighth grade and broke up with him when he tried to kiss her. _She emotionally shat on a kid in a wheelchair_ , John.”

You frown. Tavros wasn’t the kind of guy to push boundaries, so you seriously doubted that he tried to kiss Vriska before he thought she wanted to kiss him. Maybe… but she was so nice to you!

“That’s dumb,” you say instead, and Dave groans and rolls back to face the wall. You open your mouth to try and apologize when your phone chimes. It’s your dad, asking why you’re not home yet. Shit, when did it get to be eight o’clock?

“I have to go,” you mutter, grabbing you bag from the corner and glancing over your shoulder at the form still curled towards the wall on the bed. You sigh, then walk out of the apartment to head towards the bus station, waving at Bro as you go. He arches his eyebrow at you, but says nothing as you shut the front door behind you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy hell, this fic is getting long. I had a hard time getting any of my fics to go over 2,000 words before, but I guess having the plot planned out ahead of time helps. Let me know how you guys are liking this! I'd really appreciate any feedback you have.
> 
> P.S. Hmmm I wonder why Dave broke up with Terezi it is a complete mystery


	4. Chapter 4

You’d been “going out” with Vriska for two weeks before the two of you finally went on a date, and she wouldn’t have it any other day except Friday—your usual movie night with Dave. Your stomach twisted uncomfortably as you sat heavily on your bed the night before your date and dialed Dave’s number. The time you spent with him had been diminishing since you’d asked Vriska out, but that wasn’t entirely your fault! Vriska seemed to know exactly when you and Dave usually hung out and pushed her way into your schedule, all blue lipstick and curling smirks, domineering in a way that made it impossible for you to say no. You licked your lips nervously, eyes fixed on the amorphous, neon shapes bouncing around your computer monitor as it slept. 

_Ring.  
Ring.  
Ring._  
Click!

“Dude, I just swiped a massive box of shitty VHS tapes the old lady downstairs was throwing away. Movie night is going to be so fucking rad this week, you don’t even know. Holy shit, there’s a copy of Coneheads in here, this is going to be—“

“Dave.” Your voice cracks. Dave falls silent, and you clear your throat and start again. “Um. Dave, I don’t thing I’m going to be able to, uh, make it to movie night this week.”  
“Shit, are you sick? It can be at your house if you want, I can bring over the VHS player—“

“No!” You squeeze your eyes shut and pull your knees up to your chest. You felt sick. Your guts felt worse than the time Dad was out of town on a business trip and you tried to cook and gave yourself food poisoning. “No, I, ah, I have a date with Vriska. The only day she’s free is tomorrow.”

The silence on the other end of the phone is deafening. When Dave finally speaks, you expect a “Not cool, bro” or a “What the fuck man?”. Instead, he says:  
“That’s fucking bullshit and you know it.” His voice is quiet, low. Angry. The two of you had been a little less open with each other ever since the day you decided to ask Vriska out even when Dave told you not to, but it wasn’t necessarily tense. It was hard to get Dave to lose his cool, but angry? You can’t think of a time you’d heard him angry before. You can’t force words out, your throat dry and closed up.

“Don’t lie to yourself, John. Don’t let her lie to you.” A deep breath. “That fucking _bitch_.”

“I’m really sorry, Dave—“ Your voice dies in your throat when another tinny click sounds in your ear, and you know he’s hung up on you. The twisting feeling in your stomach makes you feel sick, but then it does something different—it starts to burn. How can Dave be so selfish? He doesn’t own you any more than Vriska does! You’re in high school now, you can make your own decisions. You have a girlfriend, and you kind of want to kiss her, goddammit! Or at least hold her hand. Baby steps. Dave could stand to give up one damn movie night. His movies were always shitty, anyway. Yeah. Fuck Dave, you had a date tomorrow.

You stripped down to your boxers and went to brush your teeth, forced self-satisfaction thinly covering the roiling guilt in your stomach. After you spat, you tried to smile at yourself in the mirror. Confidence. Girls liked confidence. Dave could deal. 

You didn’t sleep well that night.

♦

Dave didn’t talk to you at school the next day, which you told yourself was fine. More time for you to plan your date with Vriska! You would watch the movie, walk to Jane’s ice cream shop a few blocks away, and then walk Vriska home and try to kiss her at her front door. Ever the gentleman. Your dad would be “so, so proud of you”.

As it turned out, Vriska didn’t like ice cream and just ended up laughing at you when you got chocolate sauce on your nose, and then when you tried to walk her home she brushed you off, saying “Jeez, John, I’m a modern woman, I can take care of myself. Besides, I think if you met my mom you would shit yourself.” Then, with a snort, she was walking away with a vague “see you Monday!”. You stood among the empty picnic tables outside the shop staring after her, wondering what the hell just happened.

The weekend passes in a boring blur, with Dave still not talking to you and Rose and Jade busy with their respective lives (Jade mentioned something about a hunting trip with her grandpa, and Rose was ever the enigma—point was, nobody was on Pesterchum when you needed them). When Monday rolled around, Vriska ambushed you at the buses before you could meet up with Dave, pulling you behind her to hang out with her before class. You think you might have seen Dave pass the two of you as he headed towards homeroom, but if it was him he didn’t even look up. 

After that, you had date night with Vriska every Friday, and you didn’t see Dave at all except for between classes. He kept leaving early, a cryptic text from Bro appearing on your phone around fifth period telling you to catch the bus home. Vriska seemed happy, though! One night, the two of you were sitting together on the horizontal tire swing on the playground outside the town park, both of your legs swinging in the middle of the tire, hands clutching the three chains that supported it. Vriska leaned over and brushed her lips against yours, smiling at you when she pulled away.

“I’m really glad you came tonight, John. I was starting to wonder when you were going to break one of our little date nights to go hang out with Strider.” She side-eyes you. “But you wouldn’t do that, I know now.”

You chuckle weakly. The familiar twist in your stomach comes back, just like it always does when someone mentions your best bro. Is he even your best bro anymore? It was hard to say. “Well, I don’t know if Dave wants to hang out with me anymore. More time to spend with you, I guess! Ehehe.”

Vriska flicks her bangs, but the cool night air swirling past as you gently swing the tire pushes them right back to fall over her left eye. There’s a gently rustling all around you, the fallen leaves scuttling across the ground when the wind decides to blow. It’s a little chilly, but your lips still feel warm from where Vriska kissed you.   
“Good,” she says, breaking the slightly awkward silence. “I hated it when you hung out with him, you know. You two were borderling gay for each other. It was like you thought he was more important that I am.”   
Instinctively, your start to open your mouth to say of course Dave _is_ more important, you’ve known him practically since you can remember. He’s been your best friend since kindergarten, and you only met her this year—but the look on her face is steely, daring you to say it. You choke back on the words you were about to say and smile, reaching over to brush her bangs out of her eyes again. She smirks, then pulls away and jumps out of the tire, unbalancing it so her end nearly pops up and hits you in the face. You kind of fall out of the swing then, landing on your ass on the recycled rubber chips on the ground below. Her high, cackling laugh rings through the empty playground, and you blush.

“Oh my GOD, John,” she snickers. “You are soooooooo lame, jesus chist.”

She kisses you goodnight a few minutes later, smearing blue across your cheek and then punching your shoulder, not lightly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, dork. Don’t freeze your ass off by staying out here too long, it’s one of your few redeeming qualities.” And with that, she’s gone again, and you realize you’ve still never seen her house. You shrug and walk home, rubbing idly at the lipstick at the corner of your mouth.

And so it goes on like that, for months. You don’t see Dave at all anymore, since your teachers seem fond of quarterly seat rearrangements and he appears to be making a conscious effort to avoid you. You do catch him staring one day near winter break, when you have a bit of a hickey left over from when Vriska attacked you that morning. Later, in the locker room, you saw that although the hickey itself wasn’t so noticeable, the blue lipstick smeared on your jaw was.

Rose has become aloof too, and you think this is mainly because Dave is clinging to his cousin almost constantly—he eats lunch with her and her friend Kanaya, does projects with her, and talks to her enough to more than make up for the time he used to talk to you. You’re not sad. You’re not! He was being a jealous asshole. Yeah. How did you ever think he was cool, look at him sulking there in his skinny jeans. Dumb emo scene poser, always wearing the shades… that you gave him…

You shake your head to clear it. You have Vriska, and that’s all that matters.

♦

It was the last day of school before winter break, and you were waiting at the front of the school to walk home with Vriska. She had no problems walking you home, after all, and she always had a disgustingly sweet smile for your dad that you used to think was hilariously dissonant with her personality, but now you just kind of wish she’d be genuine with him. It felt like you were lying to him, and it was that much worse when he looked so happy and so proud that his son was a straight-A student with a steady girlfriend. That’s all you were, after all—Vriska’s nerd. Some nights you would lie in bed and try to think back to the times you spent with Dave, to fall asleep on a happy note for once, but Vriska’s high, cold laugh would echo around in your head and you would end up having nightmares about being caught in a web, naked, tied down tight in sticky ropes and you knew the spider was somewhere above your head but you couldn’t see where it was, when she was going to come and give you the bite that would put you to sleep forever—

You didn’t sleep well, most nights.

Vriska snaps her fingers in front of your eyes. “Heloooooooo, Earth to Egbert! Jesus Christ, I have something to say to you, so you’d better pull your head out of your ass and listen.”

You blink, refocusing your eyes. “Oh, hi, Vriska!” you say, attempting to look cheery. She's finally here! You hated when you started spiraling into those stupid dark thoughts, but she managed to pull you out of them with a quick kiss. Most of the time. 

She grimaces back at you, upper lip curling. She leans back and crosses her arms, looking you up and down. You wait dutifully for what she’ll say next.

“Look, John, you’re cute and stuff, but I’m not going to lie. You can be fucking annoying sometimes, and I’m honestly pretty fucking bored the rest of the time. I want to do this before the break so I don’t have to deal with you during the holidays.”

You stare at her. Blink. “Do what, exactly? You haven’t really said anything, heh.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll use small words so you get the message, genius. I’m breaking up with you.”

A chill trickles down your spine, and it takes you a moment to find your voice. “Wh-what?”

“Jesus, John, I thought you were smarter than that. I’ll give you a second to let it sink in. In the meantime, don’t text me. You’re annoying enough in person.” She flicks her bangs out of her eyes and turns, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder. “Happy holidays!” is the last thing she says before she strolls out to the buses, red Converse getting lost among the crowds of other students itching to get home for the break. You don’t move. You feel like you'd just been punched in the gut, all the wind forced from your lungs. When you finally do gasp a breath in again, the cold air burns your lungs and brings stinging tears to your eyes, although those might have already been there.

It's all you can do to keep standing there, to not collapse and let the darkness that's been prowling at the edges of your thoughts for months now overtake you. The image of the red converse plays over and over in your head. She's gone. She left. 

_How could she leave?_

 

The shadows have lengthened by the time you can scrape together enough brain power to pull out your phone. The buses are long gone, and your Dad’s flight from Vancouver was delayed that morning because of snow. You need someone to come and get you, your brain finally, painfully concludes. The gears in your head feel rusty and grind unevenly, like she was the grease keeping everything running smoothly and everything was falling apart without her. _You needed her. Why did she leave?_  
Everything feels cold, even inside your jacket, which has seen you warmly through several Seattle winters until now. You don’t think you’ve blinked since Vriska left.

Trying not to shake, you pull up your phone’s contacts. Vriska had gone through your phone a few months ago, deleting people she said she didn’t want you talking to. You hadn’t realized she deleted so many—only your Dad’s number and hers is left. A tear falls onto the screen, and you realize belatedly that it’s your own. Dave’s number was the first you entered into your phone when you first got it. How could you have let her delete it?

 

Your dad made you memorize his number and Bro’s in elementary school, so that you’d know them in case of an emergency. You hope Bro’s is still the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, long time no update! School took priority these past few months, but now I have ALL SUMMER to write. This chapter was incredibly John-heavy and required me to dust off my abusive-JohnVris headcanons, so sorry if you don't ship them (or maybe sorry if you DO ship them), but it's a necessary part of the plot. The next update should be soon!

**Author's Note:**

> You know how sometimes you love your OTP so much you just need to write about their entire life together
> 
> Yeah
> 
> That's what's happening here
> 
> wish me luck
> 
> __________  
> Message me on tumblr if you're interested in being a beta for this fic! (( crows-at-a-picnic.tumblr.com))


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